Wings of Fire Book Three: The Hidden Kingdom (5 page)

Starflight nearly leaped out of his scales. Glory felt her talons dig into the leafy dirt as she tried not to bolt into the jungle.

The screams faded, and she realized that all the RainWings were staring at her quizzically.

“Are you all right?” Jambu asked. “Wow, that’s a spooked color. You weren’t freaked like that by us! We clearly need to work on our scariness.”

“I’m not
spooked
,” Glory said, gritting her teeth and regaining control of her scales.

“I am,” Starflight stammered. “What — what was that noise?”

“Oh!” Liana said. “The screamer monkeys.” She pointed up, and Glory spotted a pair of large brown monkeys lounging on a branch overhead. “They started doing that a few years ago.”

“It startled us at first, too,” Jambu said sympathetically. “They used to make these deeper grunt-y noises, but now it’s all shrieking and gibbering like dragons being murdered. You get used to it.”

“
Do
you?” Glory asked. On the one talon, that explained what the MudWing patrols were hearing from the rainforest. On the other, it definitely did not explain the dead soldiers. And on the third talon, why would monkeys suddenly start making different noises than they had before? And on the fourth, why didn’t the RainWings think that was weird?

“Come on back to our village,” Jambu said. “We could knock you out for the flight there, if you want. You might be more comfortable. There are a lot of branches in the way.”

“No, thank you,” Starflight said.

“Absolutely not,” Glory said at the same time.

Jambu shrugged. “All right. Then follow us.” He leaped gracefully into the air and spiraled up toward the treetops. The rest of the dragons did the same. It looked a bit like a rainbow exploding and spattering color all over the trees.

Glory and Starflight followed them into the canopy, high above the forest floor, where they were surrounded by sunlit emerald green and the whirring whisper of tiny wings. Birds darted and hopped all around them, as brightly colored as the RainWings. Whenever Glory paused for more than a moment, purple and gold butterflies landed on her talons or head. Perhaps they thought she was a flower; they stayed away from Starflight’s darker scales.

The RainWings moved through the treetops with a weird grace, using their tails or spreading their wings to glide between the trees. It looked more like swimming in the air than flying. Glory wasn’t sure she’d ever get the hang of it.

But it made sense, since straight flying between the densely packed trees would be difficult for creatures the size of dragons. Starflight kept smacking into vines as he tried to keep up with them. Glory wondered if he was wishing he’d accepted the offer to be knocked out in a net like the others. She saw Sunny’s net soar past them, handed smoothly from talon to talon, from RainWing to RainWing.

With a quick glance to make sure no one was watching her, Glory tried wrapping her tail around a branch and swinging in a full circle, like the other RainWings did.

“Almost there,” Jambu said, landing beside her. His weight on the branch threw off her swing, and she ended up hanging upside down by her tail for an awkward moment. With a grin, he reached down and helped haul her back upright. Her back talons gripped the rough bark of the branch; it felt like ancient dragon scales under her claws.

“You really aren’t from around here,” he said.

“No,” Glory said as Starflight thudded down clumsily on the branch as well. “My egg was stolen from the RainWings six years ago.”

“Well, I can take you out tree gliding anytime you want to practice,” he said. “I bet you’ll figure it out pretty quickly.” He spread his wings and leaped off again.

Glory frowned at his departing pink tail.

“Yeah, that was weird,” Starflight said, answering her unspoken thought.

“Wasn’t it? As if he didn’t care at all,” Glory said. “He didn’t ask who stole me or where I was raised or even act like he remembered an egg getting stolen. As if eggs just vanish all the time, no big deal.” She scratched her ruff thoughtfully. “Well, whatever. Maybe they do. Maybe there is a rainforest monster, and the dragons are used to losing eggs to it.”

“That is really, really not comforting,” Starflight said. He wrapped his black wings closer to himself, peering down at the forest floor as if he expected something toothy to pop up and try to grab him.

Comforting. Glory couldn’t think of
any
particularly comforting explanations for Jambu’s lack of interest in her abduction.
Perhaps he’s just a weird dragon who doesn’t pay attention to dragonets or eggs. Surely the rest of my tribe w
ill care.

“Come on, let’s keep up,” she said to Starflight.

A few swings and glides later, suddenly all the RainWings around them veered up, spiraling even higher into the treetops. Starflight made an anxious noise as the nets whooshed by with their unconscious friends in them.

And then the dragons started to land, and Glory began to see the home of the RainWings.

“Oh,” she breathed. She stopped to hover in the air so she could look at every thing.

The iridescent colors of the dragons brought the hidden world forward; otherwise the village was camouflaged as well as any RainWing.

Wide vine walkways, shimmering with talon-sized orange orchids, hung between leafy platforms. A few of the treehouses had low walls or woven ceilings; others were open to the sky and carpeted with soft white flowers like fallen clouds. Glory spotted a few of the sleepy gray sloths ambling or swinging between the walkways. She wondered if they weren’t smart enough to know they were surrounded by dragons who could eat them at any moment.

This is the coolest place I’ve ever seen
, Glory thought triumphantly.
And it’s
my
place.

“Visitors!” Liana called. She had one corner of Clay’s net in her claws; carefully she and the other RainWings lowered him onto a platform wide enough for twenty dragons. Glory swept up to land beside him and watched her tribe gently set down her other friends.

Dragon heads popped up all around the village. Glory realized that most of them were in hanging contraptions like hammocks. She studied the closest one. It was strung between two trees, sturdily woven of vines and lined with violet feathers and blue petals. The dragon inside was impossible to see until he poked his head out; his scales matched the green and purple around him perfectly.

“Clever,” Starflight said, tilting his head at the hammock. He glanced at the ground miles below them and shivered. “I certainly wouldn’t want to sleep up this high without something like that. Look at that hammock design — you can’t fall out, and with RainWing camouflage, enemies aren’t likely to spot you either.”

Glory glanced down at her scales and saw a color rolling through them that she had never seen on herself before — a vibrant blue-purple she guessed meant pride. She was
prou
d
of her tribe. She’d barely met them, and already they were as impressive as she’d hoped.
So there, guardians
, she thought.
Al
l those years of making me sleep on uncomfortable rock ledges in the dark! And who are the backward dragons, exactly?

“I know, isn’t it pretty? We quite like our village, too,” Liana said, practically in Glory’s ear. Glory jumped back, flicking her tail. All right, there was one thing that made her uncomfortable: the way the other RainWings looked at her as if they expected to understand every thought she had, just by reading her scales. She clamped down on her emotions, turning her scales back to a treetop green that matched the background.

Liana didn’t seem ruffled by Glory’s reaction. The RainWing scanned the leaves overhead, then smiled as five small dragons in shades of sky blue and copper dropped through the canopy toward them.

“Hope you’re hungry,” Liana said as the dragons opened their talons. Strange shapes bounced and rolled across the platform, bumping against Glory’s sleeping friends. Glory picked up the one closest to her: lime-green and star-shaped, it smelled like pineapple and basil. She poked it with one claw, wondering if she had to peel it.

Under the mountain, the dragonets had almost never eaten fruit. She knew more from reading about it in scrolls than from the few berries Webs had sometimes brought back. Queen Scarlet was the one who’d given her pineapple.

Don’t think about Queen Scarlet.

Starflight scanned the platform with a disappointed expression. “Is all of this fruit?” he asked. “Isn’t there any meat?”

Liana wrinkled her nose. “You can hunt if you want,” she said, “but really, it’s a waste of energy.” She glanced up at the sky again. “And it’s almost our sun time, so if you must, then do it quietly.”

“Sun time?” Glory asked.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Liana shook her head. “Is that what’s wrong with you?”

“I was not aware that anything was wrong with me,” Glory said, firmly keeping her scales from changing color. “Not from a RainWing point of view, anyway.”

“It’s just your scales,” Liana said. “They’re so . . . mousy.”

Glory stared at her.
Mousy?

“You know,” Liana said apologetically. “A little dull. Not like ours.” She stretched out one wing and let a waterfall of rainbows ripple through it.

Is she saying I’m not as beautiful as other RainWings?
Certainly they were all very bright and shiny. Maybe her own scales weren’t quite as vibrant.

Glory wasn’t sure what to think of that. In fact, she was pretty sure she didn’t care. She’d always been “the pretty one” and it had never gotten her anywhere, other than chained to a decorative tree in the SkyWing Palace.

“So tell me about sun time,” she said with a shrug.

A few streaks of orange and emerald flashed through Liana’s scales and then vanished into dark blue again. Orange and emerald . . . if their scales worked the same way, then that meant Liana was feeling a little surprised and a little irritated. As if she’d hoped to prod more of a reaction out of Glory.

This scale-reading business can go both ways, my new friends.

“Sun time,” Liana said smoothly, as if her scales hadn’t changed at all. “It’s the hours when the sun is highest, so we climb up as close to it as we can and sleep.”

“Oh,” Starflight interjected in his figuring-things-out voice. “Glory! It’s like those naps you always take after lunch. I
knew
that must be a RainWing thing. But I could never figure out the point. Why sleep in the middle of the day? Don’t you all have anything more important to do?”

Glory flicked her tail and narrowed her eyes at him, but Liana didn’t seem offended.

“The sun recharges our scales while we sleep,” she explained. “It makes us prettier, better at camouflage, smarter, and happier. What could be more important than that?”

“Oh,” Starflight said again. He studied Glory like a scroll that finally made sense. “
Oh.
Happier? Like . . . less grouchy?”

“Shut up,” Glory said, giving him a shove. She’d already put some of these pieces together in her own mind. She knew that what the guardians had done — keeping her trapped underground, away from the sun her whole life — had probably made her into a grumpier, less powerful dragon than she could have been. But she didn’t need the others figuring that out because she didn’t need their pity.

And who knew what she would have been like otherwise? Being prickly was kind of an essential part of being Glory, if you asked her.

The truth was, in the Sky Kingdom, where Queen Scarlet left her in the sun all day, Glory had never felt happier or more at peace . . . or less like herself. She knew it was the effect of the sun and nothing else. She knew that what she’d experienced was like finally getting to eat as much as she needed after a lifetime of starvation. She knew that Queen Scarlet was evil and that Glory was only another sparkly piece of trea sure to her.

Part of her had hated it — hated the weird sleepiness and the unmotivated contentment that made her feel like a puddle of slugs.

And yet there was a part of her that could have stayed that way forever.

She shook herself fiercely. “So go sleep,” she said to Liana. “We’re not going anywhere.” The other RainWings who’d carried the nets had already flown off to higher platforms in the treetops. Some were sprawled out in open patches of sun, while others were stretched inside the clever hammocks, snoring.

“True,” said Liana. “We’ll wake up before your friends do.”

“Don’t you want to ask all your questions first?” Starflight said to Glory. “Don’t you want to find your family and —”

“There’s no rush,” Glory said, cutting him off. “They’re asleep now anyway. The answers will be the same in a few hours.” She knew she was good at looking like she didn’t care. She particularly wanted Liana to think she didn’t care.

It was lucky that questions couldn’t parade across her scales like her emotions, or she’d have been covered in them. But she wasn’t about to look desperate in her first moments with her new tribe. They certainly didn’t seem to have a million questions for her. So fine, she could act like this reunion was no big deal to her either.